There have been cases of dragons being the opposite of their alignments so what makes Gnolls this super race of beings that can't be something else? Besides, who says they couldn't work in an evil party? Nobody has come up with any kind of explanation why they can't.
Their Monster Manual entry and the entire chapter dedicated to them in Volo's Guide to Monsters explains why. It's been repeated throughout the thread: Yeenoghu gives them a supernatural hunger that drives them to kill and eat everything in their path.
There have been cases of dragons being the opposite of their alignments so what makes Gnolls this super race of beings that can't be something else? Besides, who says they couldn't work in an evil party? Nobody has come up with any kind of explanation why they can't.
Evil games are a tiny percentage of games played in the first place; as I recall, the intial NEXT surveys checked it out, and the majority of players were ambivalent to unhappy with the playstyle. Its simply a losing strategy for them to make such style of play a priority while writing.
No one is saying that homebrewing something for gnolls in an evil game is a bad move. But in terms of why the gnolls didn't get a race? Because evil games is sadly a non-starter.
So I think the take away here is most poeple are fine with how they are presented, and the minority that is not won’t be changing the minds of the majority that are.
Where is your proof on this supposed "majority"?
As far as your debate points go, being in the majority or minority is irrelevant. There is nothing wrong with holding a minority viewpoint (A lot of mine are!) If you are correct then it doesn't matter how many people agree with you, but it might be nice.
I think that some races should be off limits for Player Characters. It doesn't matter to me if that is Gnolls and Dwarves, or Rutterkin and Angels and Pseudodragons, just so long as some retain an aura of mystery - perhaps some great secret that we player characters are not privy to.
But I can do that individually at my table for my world, as can you. Except I am a lazy DM and prefer to let other people do the heavy lifting of world building and Lore and stuff. That leaves me free to be creative in the spaces in between that leave room for you and I to grow.....err, that may have been song lyrics, sorry.
You can do it individually by isolating the things about Gnolls that make them interesting to you and the others at the table.
Perhaps you are coming at this from a player's angle, while I predominantly cover my head with a DMs cap.
I don't know why Chris Perkins is getting all the flak;he is part of a team, and the team goal is to entertain as many people as possible (and hopefully make lots of money in the process.) That does mean the majority are going to have there tummies rubbed, while the minority will have to feed off the corpses of previous D&D editions to make a buffet fit for the Gnoll lovers.
The more you have laid out by Chris and the others, the less there is to discover on your own.
the fact that i made my gnoll not to be a murder hobo, but to go out of his way after getting his soul saved by a cleric of the setting my dm is using, to follow a different god and try to be good, despite the cost. i think fang my gnoll paladin/sorc multi class character is the expection.
One way to do a Gnoll is to make him subject of a rituel that break the Yeenogu curse-link upon him. It's a fantasy game and nothing in it is real. You are the DM work it out ^_^
I don’t like mindless bad guys and I don’t like 5e gnolls, but there’s a really cool gnoll god named Gorellik in an old book I picked up on DTRPG.
Random question: are there tieflings who are descended from demons?
The short answer is yes. They are canon in older editions.
The long answer is yes, but they are not presently mechanically supported by any released content. There was a UA on them a while back called "That old Black Magic" or something like that, but they were pretty poorly done imo. Your best bet for a demonic tiefling is to ask your DM to substitute Abyssal for Infernal and call it a day.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I don’t like mindless bad guys and I don’t like 5e gnolls, but there’s a really cool gnoll god named Gorellik in an old book I picked up on DTRPG.
Random question: are there tieflings who are descended from demons?
The short answer is yes. They are canon in older editions.
The long answer is yes, but they are not presently mechanically supported by any released content. There was a UA on them a while back called "That old Black Magic" or something like that, but they were pretty poorly done imo. Your best bet for a demonic tiefling is to ask your DM to substitute Abyssal for Infernal and call it a day.
I don’t like mindless bad guys and I don’t like 5e gnolls, but there’s a really cool gnoll god named Gorellik in an old book I picked up on DTRPG.
Random question: are there tieflings who are descended from demons?
The short answer is yes. They are canon in older editions.
The long answer is yes, but they are not presently mechanically supported by any released content. There was a UA on them a while back called "That old Black Magic" or something like that, but they were pretty poorly done imo. Your best bet for a demonic tiefling is to ask your DM to substitute Abyssal for Infernal and call it a day.
Thank you.
Technically there are Abyssal tieflings in Sword Coast Adventurer Guide, but it's only a small sidebar with a few mechanical tweaks
I don’t like mindless bad guys and I don’t like 5e gnolls, but there’s a really cool gnoll god named Gorellik in an old book I picked up on DTRPG.
Random question: are there tieflings who are descended from demons?
The short answer is yes. They are canon in older editions.
The long answer is yes, but they are not presently mechanically supported by any released content. There was a UA on them a while back called "That old Black Magic" or something like that, but they were pretty poorly done imo. Your best bet for a demonic tiefling is to ask your DM to substitute Abyssal for Infernal and call it a day.
Thank you.
Technically there are Abyssal tieflings in Sword Coast Adventurer Guide, but it's only a small sidebar with a few mechanical tweaks
i had it that high level cleric magic (7th level and up) or the wish spell could give them the choice, change the link from i must, to i feel i must, able to fight their urges
The most my brain accepts for "bad peoples are just bad" is because the bad person doesn't know any different. An insular society might think that things work a specific way and keep reinforcing that echo chamber. It might even be a common thing, but that lends itself to enlightenment to a different way.
Then... you also get those who are under supernatural influence and aren't 100% willing (and possibly not 100% aware) of the evil influence. It might even be a common thing, but that lends itself to becoming free of the influence.
That stated, the players often don't know (and often don't care) why someone's being bad. Sometimes, they never get the chance to explore it (and sometimes they just want to keep things simple).
On a slight tangent:
There's a campaign where the players encountered a bad person who turned out wasn't evil but someone in need and was resorting to things the locals had considered evil but was just to help the person's tribe - a clash of cultures. The players struck first, but eventually opened a dialog (after they were almost beaten with the first encounter and decided not to attack on the second encounter).
The second person turned out not to be evil but also in need and had resorted to methods to stop the players because the person assumed the wrong intentions of the players (which was partially the players' fault for not considering alternatives to the first NPC's solution to the tribe's problems, but the second NPC struck first instead... indirectly but still harmed the party first). This person has now joined the party to assist with the next thing that's related to the tribe's problem:
The players have just now encountered something that appears to be totally evil and egoist with no interest in anything but its own interests which involve being a predator for purely its own pleasure, not out of need. "Appears to be" is the key phrase as the previous two BBEGs weren't _BE_, just B__G even though they were assumed to be BBEGs. This time, they're talking to it first... but only because they are seriously outnumbered.
Establishing that things aren't always how they appear and how people can change and going back to players playing Gnolls:
Thanks to people I encounter at work so very often, I must believe in redemption or I'd go insane. My job also requires me to believe that every problem has a solution, but the solution might not be what I expected or hoped.
Players can play bad people or good people, and that includes good people who have gone bad just as bad people who have gone good. If the DMG has suggestions on how to use monsters as full NPCs, there may be a solution within there to take an NPC's origin or legacy or lineage or whatever and make that a playable PC.
It'll be homebrew, but what's really wrong with that? No ruleset will ever be able to cover all possibilities. It is my opinion that homebrew exists so players can fill the gaps that rulesets haven't considered. (Everything at work is all about rules and enforcing them, and there are always exceptions that cannot be covered by the rules. Any coder/programmer/designer can vouch for this.)
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
This has probably been said, but Tieflings AREN'T 1/2 devil (or demon). That would be a cambion, which is not a player option. Tieflings are more like 1/4-1/16th devil, with the precise line between tiefling and human being pretty ill defined.
So im not sure if this has been explained because....reading
but are Gnolls unreasonable because they just think talking is taking time they could be using to murder, which they prefer, or are they just way too dumb to understand reason
because if they're simply too stupid for reason, then that could be a reason to keep them unplayable unless you somehow make a hyper-intelligent Gnoll
but if its the murder-hobo on steroids reason, you could argue that they're like sharks. Can be docile but when thrown into a bloodrush, unstoppable and pure instinct. Friends are nothing but more bodies to consume (excluding other gnolls I assume) until there's nothing left to kill, in which they either calm down, or go seek more victims until they calm. In that case, they're unplayable because in most campaigns, combat is inevitable
Y'all do realize that there is literally NO REASON for most of the bad guys to have human-like brains. Their conception of morality, good/evil cannot be the same as humans and/or demihumans. There is a reason why the game needs "generic bad guys" and it has everything, now, to do with removing the moral traps bad DMs used to throw at players back in the day who didn't understand Alignment. This drive to make everything "complex" does the exact opposite because it ultimately makes everything the same. If you make Gnolls just humans in furry suits, you're doing an actual disservice to your players and to the game as a whole.
5e gnolls are severely metal and there are already plenty of “just dudes with big teeth” to choose from. I fell in love with these little abominations after reading the story in Volo’s about the wizard who linked minds with one and devoted himself to Yeenogu when realizing just how much a sense of connection and purpose the hunger of Yeenogu promised him. Yeenogu is Hunger, and his people, whether gnoll or cultist, who devote their hunger to his have a place at the feast; they are never alone and never afraid. Might I remind you that Yeeny is a demon lord, yet the relation between him and his people already feels more intimate and spiritual than between most D&D gods and their clerics.
One way to do a Gnoll is to make him subject of a rituel that break the Yeenogu curse-link upon him. It's a fantasy game and nothing in it is real. You are the DM work it out ^_^
In my homebrew world, Volo's is an actual in-game book on library shelves... but it's also about 90 percent human propaganda.
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Active characters:
Askatu, hyperfocused vedalken freedom fighter in Wildspace (Zealot barb/Swashbuckler rogue/Battle Master fighter) Green Hill Sunrise, jaded tabaxi mercenary trapped in the Dark Domains (Battle Master fighter) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Their Monster Manual entry and the entire chapter dedicated to them in Volo's Guide to Monsters explains why. It's been repeated throughout the thread: Yeenoghu gives them a supernatural hunger that drives them to kill and eat everything in their path.
Evil games are a tiny percentage of games played in the first place; as I recall, the intial NEXT surveys checked it out, and the majority of players were ambivalent to unhappy with the playstyle. Its simply a losing strategy for them to make such style of play a priority while writing.
No one is saying that homebrewing something for gnolls in an evil game is a bad move. But in terms of why the gnolls didn't get a race? Because evil games is sadly a non-starter.
As far as your debate points go, being in the majority or minority is irrelevant. There is nothing wrong with holding a minority viewpoint (A lot of mine are!)
If you are correct then it doesn't matter how many people agree with you, but it might be nice.
I think that some races should be off limits for Player Characters. It doesn't matter to me if that is Gnolls and Dwarves, or Rutterkin and Angels and Pseudodragons, just so long as some retain an aura of mystery - perhaps some great secret that we player characters are not privy to.
But I can do that individually at my table for my world, as can you. Except I am a lazy DM and prefer to let other people do the heavy lifting of world building and Lore and stuff. That leaves me free to be creative in the spaces in between that leave room for you and I to grow.....err, that may have been song lyrics, sorry.
You can do it individually by isolating the things about Gnolls that make them interesting to you and the others at the table.
Perhaps you are coming at this from a player's angle, while I predominantly cover my head with a DMs cap.
I don't know why Chris Perkins is getting all the flak;he is part of a team, and the team goal is to entertain as many people as possible (and hopefully make lots of money in the process.) That does mean the majority are going to have there tummies rubbed, while the minority will have to feed off the corpses of previous D&D editions to make a buffet fit for the Gnoll lovers.
The more you have laid out by Chris and the others, the less there is to discover on your own.
Roleplaying since Runequest.
the fact that i made my gnoll not to be a murder hobo, but to go out of his way after getting his soul saved by a cleric of the setting my dm is using, to follow a different god and try to be good, despite the cost. i think fang my gnoll paladin/sorc multi class character is the expection.
One way to do a Gnoll is to make him subject of a rituel that break the Yeenogu curse-link upon him. It's a fantasy game and nothing in it is real. You are the DM work it out ^_^
I don’t like mindless bad guys and I don’t like 5e gnolls, but there’s a really cool gnoll god named Gorellik in an old book I picked up on DTRPG.
Random question: are there tieflings who are descended from demons?
The short answer is yes. They are canon in older editions.
The long answer is yes, but they are not presently mechanically supported by any released content. There was a UA on them a while back called "That old Black Magic" or something like that, but they were pretty poorly done imo. Your best bet for a demonic tiefling is to ask your DM to substitute Abyssal for Infernal and call it a day.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Thank you.
Technically there are Abyssal tieflings in Sword Coast Adventurer Guide, but it's only a small sidebar with a few mechanical tweaks
Awesome 😊. I liked SCAG.
i had it that high level cleric magic (7th level and up) or the wish spell could give them the choice, change the link from i must, to i feel i must, able to fight their urges
In general:
The most my brain accepts for "bad peoples are just bad" is because the bad person doesn't know any different. An insular society might think that things work a specific way and keep reinforcing that echo chamber. It might even be a common thing, but that lends itself to enlightenment to a different way.
Then... you also get those who are under supernatural influence and aren't 100% willing (and possibly not 100% aware) of the evil influence. It might even be a common thing, but that lends itself to becoming free of the influence.
That stated, the players often don't know (and often don't care) why someone's being bad. Sometimes, they never get the chance to explore it (and sometimes they just want to keep things simple).
On a slight tangent:
There's a campaign where the players encountered a bad person who turned out wasn't evil but someone in need and was resorting to things the locals had considered evil but was just to help the person's tribe - a clash of cultures. The players struck first, but eventually opened a dialog (after they were almost beaten with the first encounter and decided not to attack on the second encounter).
The second person turned out not to be evil but also in need and had resorted to methods to stop the players because the person assumed the wrong intentions of the players (which was partially the players' fault for not considering alternatives to the first NPC's solution to the tribe's problems, but the second NPC struck first instead... indirectly but still harmed the party first). This person has now joined the party to assist with the next thing that's related to the tribe's problem:
The players have just now encountered something that appears to be totally evil and egoist with no interest in anything but its own interests which involve being a predator for purely its own pleasure, not out of need. "Appears to be" is the key phrase as the previous two BBEGs weren't _BE_, just B__G even though they were assumed to be BBEGs. This time, they're talking to it first... but only because they are seriously outnumbered.
Establishing that things aren't always how they appear and how people can change and going back to players playing Gnolls:
Thanks to people I encounter at work so very often, I must believe in redemption or I'd go insane. My job also requires me to believe that every problem has a solution, but the solution might not be what I expected or hoped.
Players can play bad people or good people, and that includes good people who have gone bad just as bad people who have gone good. If the DMG has suggestions on how to use monsters as full NPCs, there may be a solution within there to take an NPC's origin or legacy or lineage or whatever and make that a playable PC.
It'll be homebrew, but what's really wrong with that? No ruleset will ever be able to cover all possibilities. It is my opinion that homebrew exists so players can fill the gaps that rulesets haven't considered. (Everything at work is all about rules and enforcing them, and there are always exceptions that cannot be covered by the rules. Any coder/programmer/designer can vouch for this.)
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
This has probably been said, but Tieflings AREN'T 1/2 devil (or demon). That would be a cambion, which is not a player option. Tieflings are more like 1/4-1/16th devil, with the precise line between tiefling and human being pretty ill defined.
Also, wow a lot of arguement on this thread.
Proud poster on the Create a World thread
We have to pay $30 for that.
Hello. I am a red dragonborn. Fear me.
So im not sure if this has been explained because....reading
but are Gnolls unreasonable because they just think talking is taking time they could be using to murder, which they prefer, or are they just way too dumb to understand reason
because if they're simply too stupid for reason, then that could be a reason to keep them unplayable unless you somehow make a hyper-intelligent Gnoll
but if its the murder-hobo on steroids reason, you could argue that they're like sharks. Can be docile but when thrown into a bloodrush, unstoppable and pure instinct. Friends are nothing but more bodies to consume (excluding other gnolls I assume) until there's nothing left to kill, in which they either calm down, or go seek more victims until they calm. In that case, they're unplayable because in most campaigns, combat is inevitable
Y'all do realize that there is literally NO REASON for most of the bad guys to have human-like brains. Their conception of morality, good/evil cannot be the same as humans and/or demihumans. There is a reason why the game needs "generic bad guys" and it has everything, now, to do with removing the moral traps bad DMs used to throw at players back in the day who didn't understand Alignment. This drive to make everything "complex" does the exact opposite because it ultimately makes everything the same. If you make Gnolls just humans in furry suits, you're doing an actual disservice to your players and to the game as a whole.
5e gnolls are severely metal and there are already plenty of “just dudes with big teeth” to choose from. I fell in love with these little abominations after reading the story in Volo’s about the wizard who linked minds with one and devoted himself to Yeenogu when realizing just how much a sense of connection and purpose the hunger of Yeenogu promised him. Yeenogu is Hunger, and his people, whether gnoll or cultist, who devote their hunger to his have a place at the feast; they are never alone and never afraid. Might I remind you that Yeeny is a demon lord, yet the relation between him and his people already feels more intimate and spiritual than between most D&D gods and their clerics.
In my homebrew world, Volo's is an actual in-game book on library shelves... but it's also about 90 percent human propaganda.
Active characters:
Askatu, hyperfocused vedalken freedom fighter in Wildspace (Zealot barb/Swashbuckler rogue/Battle Master fighter)
Green Hill Sunrise, jaded tabaxi mercenary trapped in the Dark Domains (Battle Master fighter)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
As far as I can tell, no one asked for that! So no problem.